


Aegri Somnia

by Odile (Odileheroin_e)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Coping, Dark Mark, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluffy Ending, Guilt, HP: Epilogue Compliant, Malfoy Manor, Nightmares, Occlumency, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Potions, Recovery, Repressed Memories, Romance, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, caring parents!Lucius & Narcissa, or not?, pretty BAMF!Astoria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 09:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4055176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odileheroin_e/pseuds/Odile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, he avoided all living things and instead visited empty rooms where Death wafted in the air – any part of the house that was devoid of life would do for him. And he would stand in those rooms and recreate the past that had been acted out in them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aegri Somnia

**Author's Note:**

> Written in one sitting. I’ve gone through this site’s Draco/Astoria-fics pretty thoroughly, so pls don’t sue if you notice that some parts remind you of other fics – not trying to steal anybody’s stories!

When the battle was lost and won, the Malfoys found themselves not belonging. Narcissa held her son close, both arms loosely wound around him, and Lucius placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder, enclosing the family in a small world of their own. Isolated and unnoticed, like a tiny boat unanchored in the middle of a vast sea after a storm, they observed the world around them in silence.

It was Narcissa who made the move on leaving. It was subtle and contained, like her manner in everything was; a reassuringly firm, yet gentle brush of hand, from Draco’s back to Lucius’ arm. Lucius turned to her and nodded, equally calm and contained.

Draco’s eyes could not leave the battleground – the ruins, the wounds… the bodies. (His wandering gaze stopped at a slumped, black form that looked like his Aunt Bellatrix.) It was as if his ears were still ringing with the hum of the battle – he found he could not think perfectly straight and that a numbness had spread itself over his mind. It felt out of place, wrong, almost, to see that the battle was over. The silence of the lifeless human forms had settled into Draco’s thoughts: he felt somehow subdued. The fight for his life was over and he had won it. The castle was no longer being torn to pieces, the Room of Hidden Things was no longer aflame, he no longer had to search the corridors, wandless, for his parents. No-one was launching Killing Curses at him, no foe nor ally, or whoever he had thought had been his foe or his ally.

And thus he was being guided out of the castle and into the even more wrong silence and chill of the air outside.

 

* * *

 

 

Once inside the Manor, Draco felt sufficiently cleared of the fog in his head to walk up to his room on his own. He heard a murmur calling after him and a soft hand sliding from his palm, but he paid no mind to his father’s voice or his mother’s touch. He ascended the stairs, softly but swiftly, dreading both noise and the shadows of the Manor. He crossed the desolate corridor in a silence that was both heavy and sweet, a curse and a blessing. He closed the door as quickly as he could without making any noise, left his clothes lying around the floor and fell asleep in his bed.

 

* * *

 

 

On the first nights, there were no nightmares. He slept heavy and deep but short-lived sleep in bouts of few hours at a time, sometimes falling back to sleep with ease, sometimes awakening well before his parents, unable to sleep an eyeful more.

When awake, he would walk the halls of the Manor like a ghost, quiet and pale. He took care to stay out of his parents’ way, not because he did not want to see them or had grown to hate them, but because he was mortified by the thought of the heavy, protective silence breaking. So, he avoided all living things and instead visited empty rooms where Death wafted in the air – any part of the house that was devoid of life would do for him. And he would stand in those rooms and recreate the past that had been acted out in them. The Dark Lord had stood there, while Draco himself had stood right over there, staring at Rowle on the floor, the fireplace and a red light illuminating the darkness. Down in the dungeons, the goblin, Ollivander and that mad Ravenclaw girl had been held. For all he knew, they were all still there.

But he could not imagine Potter there. The thought of Potter felt as intrusive as noise did, it seemed to dispel his silence. So he pushed him out and ascended the stairs from the dungeon to the memory of Aunt Bellatrix torturing Granger and stared with vacant eyes at the very spot they had occupied on the floor. _“Mudblood”_ , the brand on Granger’s arm whispered through his silence, and with a start he pressed his own arm against his body, to hide it from the accusing whisper.

From that moment on, Draco shunned the word he had once used so liberally.

 

* * *

 

 

Narcissa and Lucius were not fools, and they knew that Draco’s worrying wanderings inside the Manor were not doing him any good. No, they feared their son. They feared that anything they might do to reach out to him might make him lash out, or worse, crumble. So they let him wander. But they grew more apprehensive and fearful with every day passing.

Their salvation came in the form of a letter, inviting all able and willing wizarding families to the reconstruction of the Hogwarts Castle. The event would last for a single day only, and was purposed both for building the castle and building unity in the war-torn wizarding society. Narcissa and Lucius debated whether or not to attend: on one hand they were likely not truly expected there and would doubtless meet some form of hostility, on the other hand it might be better to show up than not show up and demonstrate that they were willing to start over once more. Even more importantly, it would be good to get Draco out of the Manor.

Once they noticed that he had taken to wringing and scratching his left forearm, they decided to go.

 

* * *

 

 

The weather was bright and sunny on the day of the rebuilding of Hogwarts. Draco stepped outside just after his parents, who looked at him with smiles bordering between artificially encouraging to genuinely sad. Draco blinked at the sunlight, only then really remembering what natural light was like.

At Hogwarts, he quickly noticed that his magic had seemed to grow just as brittle and quiet as the weeks inside the Manor had made him. Attempting to levitate a rather large stone yielded little results, and with a dark look he followed Potter easily lift a much larger rock into the air. Draco swallowed and tried to concentrate, which helped, but not as significantly as Granger’s second Leviosa on the stone. She caught his eyes with a sort of an apologetic half-smile. Whether she was sorry for his dwindled powers or for having to take over his rock, he didn’t know. He returned the look with a bitter and extremely short-lived sneer that soured so fast he had to turn away from her.

With that, her face fell so dramatically that Draco felt disgust lurching in his stomach for the pity she obviously harboured for him. Before his eyes left her and he turned his back at her, he registered the stone faltering slightly mid-air, Weasley’s snapped demand for her to watch her Leviosas following the slip. _“Mudblood_ ”, the faded Dark Mark reminded him from under his sleeve.

 

* * *

 

 

Hermione apologised Ron for almost having knocked his head off his shoulders (as he sourly complained) and turned to Harry. Her look startled Harry, and just as he was about to ask her what was wrong, he saw Malfoy’s back turned at them and the question ascended from his lips to his eyes. He returned Hermione’s shocked gaze with a questioning one, which she affirmed by carefully indicating Malfoy with a discreet nod.

Harry studied Malfoy. He was now crouched near something that he was obviously trying to weave magically back together, but his Reparo seemed to fail him just as the pieces seemed to hold. Though Draco was nearing his eighteenth birthday, he didn’t look much better than his sixteen-year-old self. He was pale – not Malfoy-pale, not even first-year-as-Death-Eater-pale, but paler than he had ever been and thin as paper. He reminded Harry of a curious mixture between bleached Muggle office paper and the wizarding world’s parchment. The stint of pity Harry had felt for Malfoy at the end of his sixth year suddenly grew stronger, as he found himself fast-forwarding everything he knew Malfoy had had to go through. The thought alone of listing the possibilities of what else _might have_ happened during his two years as Voldemort’s servant exhausted and slightly repulsed Harry. Though he would never forget nor entirely forgive the years Malfoy had spent being an arse, Harry would always remember Malfoy’s horrified face in the firelight, seen through Voldemort’s eyes, and his curious refusal to identify Harry to Lucius. Though his ever-arrogant exterior would not allow it to show in his words or deeds, Harry saw the strain of his mistakes on his body and knew that the war was yet to be over for Malfoy.

Harry leaned past Hermione, pointed his wand at the shattered pieces at Malfoy’s feet and muttered a Reparo. The metal fragments reformed into a headpiece of a suit of armour, and Malfoy, having just tapped the mess at his wand, seemed very pleased with himself.

 

* * *

 

 

At first Draco had truly feared that all he would be able to cast for the rest of his life were Unforgivable Curses, but being finally able to piece the helmet together proved otherwise. From that on, he seemed to be in better control of his magic, and was by the end of the day able to levitate just as big objects as Potter. Noise no longer intimidated him, the uplifting commotion of the castle grounds having softly pressed through his silence with every step towards the castle. Though he had expected the day at Hogwarts to be a complete disaster, he was actually feeling rather good by the end of it. Lucius and Narcissa, unbeknownst to him, were doing their very best to contain their elation.

That evening was the first since forever when the family had dinner together. During his wandering weeks Draco had mostly lived on the meals house elves had left to his room. Now, Narcissa was only able to ignore the tears filling up her eyes by the virtue of her upbringing, and Lucius found himself smiling more often and more genuinely than ever in the last three years.

When Malfoy Manor darkened to sleep that night, Narcissa and Lucius went to bed happiest since their marriage and Draco’s birth. Draco, however, would soon after climbing to bed be seized by nightmares and get tangled in guilty thoughts and complex what-ifs.

It only just then occurred to him that Granger was probably still carrying the scar carved by Aunt Bella. Which hand was it? Left? Which one was her wandhand? Could she have levitated his rock with the arm that bore the mark? "The Mark"?

And suddenly he could recall her screams, more vividly than ever. Those screams, every one he had heard when wearing the Dark Lord’s brand, had seeped into his blood, and now they were all clamouring in his veins, sworn to vengeance, begging for release. Just then, the scar of the Mark prickled, so he scratched, or rather, tore at it with his fingernails. He tossed and turned and then willed himself to stay absolutely still, closing his eyes and working Occlumency at shutting out the noise. It took an hour, but he succeeded.

Soon after, he fell asleep – fretful, terrible sleep. He dreamed of sprinting through the crumbling, burning castle, desperate to find something or someone, running for dear life to the Astronomy Tower. The tower, too, was aflame, and an old man stood waiting for him at the top of it.

“Come over to the right side”, he said, extending his arm towards him, and Draco leaped, desperate to grab that hand –

A green light flashed before his eyes, and the old man was falling from the tower, but he was no longer an old man; he was first his mother, then his father, then Crabbe and then Granger, all screaming as they fell.

 

* * *

 

 

Soon after, the abuse of Dreamless Sleep began.

Though he could suppress and compartmentalise his waking mind with Occlumency, Draco discovered that the dream world was out of his reach. Having already had extensive training in locking up certain emotions and throwing out the key, he soon championed over the screams in his blood and eventually many of his guilty thoughts and memories as well. At night, however, all of this struck back with vengeance, somehow miraculously growing in bloodlust and ferocity with every wispy, dirty grey memory and thought dark and bloody like a dragon heartstring he forced himself to ignore.

Narcissa and Lucius initially feared that the recovery he had seen during the Hogwarts Day had crumbled to dust, but were soon somewhat reassured by his seemingly increased capability to cope. However, as any Muggle psychologist or an experienced Healer could have told them, locking things up was not recovering. Draco never answered the desperate shrieks, so they could only keep on screaming. The possibility of hiring a private Healer was discussed, briefly, but Draco assured there was no need for one.

Though the relief of the Hogwarts Day was now long gone and Draco smiled rather rarely, he was getting out of the house, which pleased his parents. Mostly he attended parties and browsed bookstores – wizarding bookstores and pure-blood parties, naturally, even if it wasn't really about his disgust for the Muggle world anymore. To be sure, his upbringing was not completely lost on him, and he did still feel a rather strong disdain for all things Muggle or impure of blood, but he mostly stuck with pure-blood social circles out of the need for security. The families his family had known all his life were, after all, a safer haven than strange, scary, ridiculous and disgusting Muggle world.

 

* * *

 

 

It was at one such pure-blood party that he met the younger Greengrass sister, Astoria. A two-year gap at Hogwarts was rather too significant for them to have ever really held a conversation at school, so the meeting could be thought of as their first one.

While it could not be truthfully said that he had fallen in love at first sight or that he would have felt any particular magic in the air at that meeting, he did feel drawn to Astoria. Or, rather, he felt genuinely interested in her and what she had to say, which was more than could be said of most people he had talked to since the war. He remembered it for years to come: he watched her speak, and although her manner was very similar to just about every other daughter of a Sacred Twenty-Eight family, she spoke with the air of truly meaning every word. She made him feel like she was not simply holding a conversation out of social necessity, but that she actually wanted to talk to him. It made him feel like… “ _like there was no-one else in the world she so wanted to see_.” Where was that from, again?

Then again, the contrast between this feeling and her overall was markedly strange. She reminded him of his mother, being calm and even slightly restrained in her demeanour, but yet there was this half-hidden arduousness – was it in the content or the delivery? He simply could not tell.

By the time the party was over, he felt like the rather idle chit-chat he had just had with her had been very meaningful indeed.

 

* * *

 

 

He did not mention any of this to his parents that night. Both of them however noticed that he seemed rather odd – whether in a good or bad way, though, they did not know. It wasn’t until he had owled her letters upon letters, received just as many in response and met her a second time that he (rather thoughtlessly, he thought later on) pondered aloud to his parents:

“I think I’m in love.”

 

* * *

 

 

The wedding was the happiest since he had been in… well, he preferred to think that it was the happiest he had ever been. And it might well have been true, mind you. Though Lucius and Narcissa were not perfectly content with his bride and were not afraid to let it show, Draco needed no Occlumency-powered suppression to ignore them. True, he himself had been taken aback by Astoria’s views and especially by her very explicit refusal to raise any children that would ensue from the union in the ideology of pure-blood supremacy. Though he himself had never truly grown out of his disgust for Muggles and Muggle-borns, he couldn’t deny being more or less smitten by Astoria’s folded hands and cold “fight me”-expression after her declaration.

Perhaps this had been what had shone through her words in their first meeting. The determination in her words and the pride she took in standing her own ground – were they not bound to attract a Slytherin?

Very secretly, he had also felt an unspeakable relief. His children would not carry on the tradition of hatred that had spawned the pain that still screamed somewhere in his subconscious. He would be able to protect them from the mistakes he had done. And surely he could keep an eye on whose company they kept, anyway?

That blissful sensation of relief would stay with him, and he would marvel at the strength of it.

 

* * *

 

 

He had never stopped using Dreamless Sleep since ascertaining the fact that his Occlumency could not keep the nightmares at bay. And of course, out of all the nights possible, it had to be his wedding night that he would forget the potion.

Astoria woke him up at God-knows-what o’clock, and the undisguised shock and worry in her eyes made him finally face the fact that he would inevitably have to share his secrets with her. Or he would at least have to make up his mind about which ones to share.

The time was, however, running rather short, as he knew that she would not content herself with dismissive statements, lies about not remembering the dream or least of all commands to forget about it. So he promised, instead, that he would tell her in the morning, and though she gave him a rather concerned look, she conceded to this.

Having thus far done fine (or so he thought) with Dreamless Sleep and Occlumency, he was naturally reluctant to start picking at the scabs. Soon, however, it would turn out that there were no scabs under the dressings, but very open wounds – until Astoria would discover the full extent of the mutilation he imposed upon his soul and undo it, one painful piece after another.

And he trusted himself to her. Though he had feared, all that time before their marriage, that she would turn away from him in horror were she to catch the briefest glimpse of the Dark Mark or be allowed to peer into his criminal mind, he trusted her now. Had she not confronted him with a capacity for tolerance and acceptance unparalleled by anyone else he could call a friend? Would she not forgive him for his upbringing like she had forgiven herself for hers? And, would she not protect him from himself, come what may – wake him from whatever terrible dreams he may fall into?

So she would piece him back together, until he was whole again. Changed – not quite the shape he used to be; scarred – not the same he once was; but whole, nevertheless.

**Author's Note:**

> I always thought that Draco would be the type of “survivor” who would never actually deal with stuff but instead, being a capable Occlumens, push things to the back of his mind and not think about it. But really, you can’t heal if you refuse to look at the wounds. 
> 
> I also like to believe that Draco and Astoria are a pretty beautiful couple – Astoria with her accepting attitude that has apparently been able to triumph over her upbringing and Draco with his war traumas, lost sense of security and deep-rooted dependency. Maybe Draco’s Patronus would change to match Astoria’s if he could conjure one?


End file.
